Take It Slow Just as Fast as I Can
by foxgloved
Summary: Zuko's a career cop. He's a tough, bad-guy-catching badass, okay? But this latest assignment has really thrown him off his game. Catching a hooker soliciting is one thing, but it's a lot harder when he's the one getting solicited. And she's cute, and funny, and has blue eyes that crinkle when she smiles, and looks like she just needs someone to feed her some soup. Zuko is so fired.
1. Chapter 1

There's a light mist in the air as Zuko makes his way across the street towards the alley where he'd gotten the call that the hooker would be waiting, looking for customers. Before long he sees the girl standing, back pressed to the old stone wall and one knee kicked up for support. Zuko feels like an idiot, wearing a suit that costs more than his used truck, and a watch that's even more expensive. Both are on loan from his old college buddy Jet, now an investment banker downtown—

 _"_ _You can have them under one condition," Jet had warned him._

 _"_ _What's that?" Zuko had asked warily._

 _"_ _Don't you dare get any come on them. I swear to_ God ** _,_** _Zuko."_

 _"_ _What the fuck? I'm not actually going to have sex, you know that, right? I just need to make a_ deal _with a prostitute."_

 _After that, Jet had dissolved into laughter, so hard he almost fell over out of his chair, and Zuko had made a break for it with the clothes before Jet made any more Magic Mike jokes. Zuko should never have agreed to see that movie with him. He definitely wouldn't have, if he'd known this assignment was coming up. Magic Mike's not even_ about _hookers, either. It's a good thing they didn't see Pretty Woman—_

His only comfort is the fact that the hooker looks even more ridiculous than he does. She has overdramatic beauty queen curls, a choker necklace, and a sequined shirt that leaves more exposed than covered, tucked into a pair of sinfully tight cut-off blue jean shorts. She looks like she's trying too hard; like she's trying to use her clothes to cover up the fact that she's nervous about this. Instead of turning Zuko off, it makes him feel protective. He wants to wrap the kid in his coat—to cover her up so no one else can see her—and then take her home and feed her.

Then again, despite the overcompensation, there's a strength in the girl's body that's unmistakable. Zuko's eyes catch on her lean thighs and the well-defined muscles of the hooker's arms, further emphasized by the way she's crossing them under her chest, and his mouth goes dry. None of what he's feeling is appropriate, basically. He's perving on a _teenager._ He should be preparing himself to turn the kid around and cuff her to send her off to jail. What he's actually thinking about are all the other reasons he might roll her over. She has a _really_ nice ass.

The closer he gets, the more his nerves spike. The hell was he thinking, signing up for this assignment? He can't pick up a _hooker._ It's already obvious that he's miserably bad at this. The only thing that helps him relax at all is the way her eyes keep darting over to a screen in a nearby bar; she's checking the score of a soccer match to pass the time. It's such a normal thing to do that it makes this whole situation seem marginally less ridiculous.

"Hey there," he says, once he's close enough to be heard. He's surprised by how deep and rumbly his voice comes out. He sounds like he's trying to be sexy.

The hooker jumps, then seems to catch herself, licking her lips and looking up at Zuko through her lashes. And wow, now that he's closer, Zuko can see that the girl isn't a kid; isn't some teenager playing dress-up. She's about Zuko's age, which doesn't help Zuko's simmering attraction to her one bit. Some of the guilt dissipating opens the doors for Zuko to admire her even more openly. "Hey yourself."

There's a stirring of warmth in Zuko's gut that he immediately pushes away, trying to concentrate on his training. "You lookin' for a good time tonight?"

Instantly once he gets the words out, he wants to cringe. Gross, he sounds like a sexual predator. Way to go, Zuko.

The corner of the hooker's mouth turns up in a half smile, like she's trying not to laugh at him. "Depends," she replies. "What's in it for me?"

Zuko can't arrest her until there's concrete proof that she'll have sex for money. He needs a clear statement of intent—a 'you'll have to pay me _this_ much'.

"A better view of that game for one," Zuko says, because his next line is supposed to be something about his dick, and he might actually die of embarrassment if he says that. 'I've got a big screen in my bedroom."

The hooker snorts, giving Zuko a grin that seems genuine, considering how deep her dimples go, and how bright her blue eyes get. She gives Zuko a once-over, and the trail of her gaze burns through Zuko's clothes. "Tempting. What else 'ya got?"

Zuko is struck by the realization that he actually _wants_ to have sex with this girl. If they were in that bar together—if she was anyone else in the entire city—he would be gunning to try to go home with her; drawing on his real lines, or just manning up and asking her to dinner. Despite the horrible clothes, he's drawn to her. Those eyes and that smile are really doing it for him.

But fuck, he's going to have to arrest her, instead.

"What do you need?" he drawls, while he fights off a stab of discomfort about setting up the trap like this, so neatly.

His gaze lingers on the hooker's full pink lips for a few seconds, still wet from the earlier swipe of her tongue. Staring so intently, Zuko can watch every move as she opens her mouth, forming the reply that will allow him to lock her up behind bars.

"HEY!" someone shouts, from an open window behind them, sounding furious. "This is private property! Don't make me call the cops!"

"Fuck!" Zuko says, stepping back. It's too early to have his cover blown.

Somehow, without noticing it, he'd gotten really close to the hooker. His breath is coming short. The waistband of his pants feels tight.

"Shit!" the hooker says, at the same time.

They stare at each other for one frozen second before there's another, "Take your business elsewhere!"

"The park around the corner," she says quickly while Zuko is fighting warring disappointment (that he's never going to see her again) and relief (thank fuck, he can wait and arrest someone else who's less tempting). "Tomorrow night. Same time, if you're still interested."

Then she takes off running in the opposite direction that Zuko needs to go.

He is, sadly, still extremely interested.

::

Zuko is five minutes early the next night, walking up in even more humid air than yesterday, under a gloomy sky. He'd spent the entire drive over lecturing himself about how inappropriate it was to be attracted to the hooker he was supposed to be _arresting_ , and how important is would be that he keep it together this time. For some reason—oh, like how much of the morning he'd spend daydreaming about her lips—he has a bad feeling that the pep talk won't stick.

The hooker is already there when he arrives, pacing on the sidewalk by the rose garden and muttering to herself. "Get your head in it, K—"

"Hello?" Zuko asks, curious, and a little worried.

"Oh shit," she says, freezing like a deer caught in headlights. She's in an equally ridiculous outfit tonight—this time, a fringed purple top, showing off her collarbones, and a blindingly reflective miniskirt that she keeps having to tug down. "You came."

"Course I came," Zuko says. "I mean, _look_ at you." It's partially sarcastic, because he can't help himself—does this girl own a mirror?—but at the same time, it's more honest than he would like.

The hooker blinks, and the sweep of her eyelashes is spellbinding in the dim light of the lamp overhead.

"Right," she says throatily. "Where were we, again? Remind me."

"We were talking about what I have to do to get you in my bed," he tells her, stepping closer and letting his own voice drop. That's easy enough to say, because a larger part of himself than he would like wants it to happen.

"Right," the hooker says, grinning slowly, the promise that Zuko wishes he would get to have. "I was telling you—"

There's the loud boom of a thunderclap overheard, an ominous warning. Seconds later, it's pouring outside, heavy raindrops soaking them both through to the skin. They both swear again in unison. The water is freezing. Zuko can see goosebumps dotting across the hooker's arms, and though he tries not to focus on it, he's pretty sure her nipples are pushing up out of that godawful purple fringe.

" _Fuck,"_ Zuko says with feeling. His mind is racing, trying to come up with a back-up plan. All he can think about, though, is how much he wants to kiss the girl standing in front of him. She's bordering on public indecency, clothes matted to her compact frame. Zuko never really thought he had a type before today, but now he's perfectly aware that his type is _wet._

"Tomorrow night," she says, while Zuko is staring at her, struck speechless. "Day Eight Motel. Same time."

They'll be together in a room. With a _bed_. That's going to be a nightmare of a test for Zuko's self-control. Only the shock of cold water raining down keeps his head clear and stops his thoughts from derailing to all that he could do to her with a mattress to spread her out on and a little privacy. He nods, starting to jog backwards in the direction of where he'd parked his squad car, well out of sight of their meeting location.

Just before they'll be out of hearing distance, he catches himself. "Wait!" he calls, and the hooker turns to face him, those miles of smooth brown skin caressed by planes of water. "What name will it be under?"

"Ka-Kyoka," the hooker stutters.

 _Kyoka._ It has to be a fake name. Zuko _really_ hopes she has enough sense, at least, to give him a fake name.

It's a start, though.

::

Kyoka is waiting for him in the lobby, saving him from an uncomfortable conversation with the check-in clerk at the front desk. This time she's wearing comfortable looking velvet track pants and a velvet zip-up jacket, only half-zipped, with nothing on underneath. The pants say _Juicy_ across the butt. Zuko snorts when he sees her—it's instinctive and he can't cover up the sound after it escapes his mouth.

"What?" Kyoka demands, her mouth going flat.

Zuko very pointedly doesn't analyze the fact that he feels so comfortable messing around with a suspected criminal.

"Do you always dress like a pimp in a bad hustler movie?" he asks, laughing.

She half glares at him, eyes narrowing even as half of her face twitches with humor, and it only makes Zuko want her more, seeing that little bit of push-back.

"Only for you, sugar," Kyoka says, faux-sweetly.

The endearment catches Zuko off guard. "What?"

Kyoka looks around, checking the mostly deserted lobby and then lowering her voice. "I thought it would be a good name for you—because, you know, you're kind of my sugar daddy. That's easy enough to remember. Plus I need a name to call you when we're…" she makes a lewd gesture with her fist.

"Oh," Zuko says, heartbeat easing. Yeah, that is pretty easy to remember. Though he's more like her future arrestor. Ugh. "Right. Sure, you can call me that."

What does that hand motion mean anyway, he wonders wildly. Jerking off? _Fisting?_ Something else? He'd really like to know what she means by that gesture. Especially since he won't get to find out.

He thinks, for just a second, about what it would be like to hear her moaning his name in bed, and he instantly feels flushed all over, burning with the desire to go upstairs. He wants to kiss her more than he can remember wanting to kiss anyone in years. Wants to do a whole lot more than kissing, too.

"Good," Kyoka says, her voice that honey tone that had been driving Zuko crazy in the park. "So, sugar…" Now the pet name just sounds sexy in her low purr, not laughable at all. He shivers. "You wanna hear what you need to do to get me upstairs?"

" _Hell yes,"_ Zuko says, with feeling.

"All I need is—"

The fire alarm starts blaring overhead; an obnoxious screeching sound that makes Zuko feel like his eardrums are going to explode.

"I'm going to fuckin' _shoot_ something," he yells to Kyoka.

"I'll help," she yells back grimly.


	2. Chapter 2

The pattern continues like that for two more fucking weeks. On Friday, Zuko rents a car with a spacious backseat and tries to drive them out of the city to somewhere more secluded. Less than ten minutes after they get on the highway, there's a five car pile-up ahead of them, backing up traffic. On Monday, Kyoka books a presidential suite for them, only for them to learn to that their reservation had been lost in the system and the rest of the rooms are sold out ( _"_ _So sorry, sir but we're overbooked now. There's nothing we can do.")._

On Thursday, Zuko finally gets his mouth on Kyoka's in a cab, and it feels like heaven, hand steadily moving up her thigh while she sucks on his tongue. The kiss gets increasingly heated. She climbs half into his lap, and he makes a gutteral sound at the sensation of her body slotting against his, tightening his grip on her hips so he won't try to rip off her clothes. The noise seems to be the last straw, in a long series of dirty looks in the rearview mirror. The cab driver kicks them out, miles away from their hotel, and somehow gets Zuko's wallet in the exchange, leaving them stranded.

He passes his time in between not having sex with Kyoka, thinking about _why_ Kyoka might need to have sex for money. Does she have a terminally ill grandmother? Are her student loans that expensive? Does she have a brother she needs to pay bail on to get out of prison? The wilder the reasons Zuko comes up with, the less he can bring himself to pull out his badge. If she's suffering through something that tragic, she doesn't deserve to have this heaped on top of her as well.

Plus, she's way too pretty to go to jail. People would do terrible things to her on the inside. The only person who should be allowed to do terrible things to Kyoka is Zuko.

::

By the time Zuko looks up in a crowded coffee shop in the city center on a rare day off and catches Kyoka's gaze across a room of plushy sofas, arresting her is furthest thing from his mind. He's on the verse of going insane, only a few days away from taking his gun to the shooting range and firing away all of the fucking sexual tension that's starting to keep him up at night at this point. He has a whole new morning jerk-off routine now, considering how often he's woken up from dreams about finally getting underneath Kyoka's ridiculous clothes and needed to take care of himself.

But now she's wearing normal clothes for once—a blue t-shirt and loose jeans. She looks so much better in them than she ever has in her cheesy late night uniforms. Her hair isn't all primped and flows down her back. There's a scarf around her neck. She's setting down a steaming coffee thermos so that she can tear a pack of sugar with her teeth and drop it into her drink. Zuko is ridiculously charmed by that little detail—the fact that even hookers care enough about the environment to carry their own thermoses with them. Kyoka looks normal—like someone Zuko can _have;_ like someone he could take home and introduce to his mom _._ The whole scene makes his breath catch.

Right away, her eyes go wide with recognition, a breathtaking shade of blue. Coffee mug forgotten by her elbow, she tugs her bottom lip between her teeth in a self-conscious motion that goes straight to Zuko's dick. His feet carry him across the room on autopilot. He's a piece of scrap metal, drawn irresistibly to a magnet. Kyoka helps close the distance, coming around the counter. In only a few seconds, Zuko is in arm's reach.

"My apartment is a one minute walk away," he tells her, breathing a little hard in anticipation. "There was no construction; no fires; no traffic jams; nothing at all wrong, three minutes ago when I walked over here. I can't think of anything that would get in our way. _Please_ come home with me."

Kyoka is breathing hard too, chest rising and falling in time with Zuko's, and lips bitten red.

" _Yes,"_ she says, fervently.

::

The very moment they get inside Zuko's apartment, he pushes Kyoka back against the wall and kisses her hard, hands clenched in her scarf. She tastes like the coffee she'd abandoned back in the store, and she looks incredible, curls windswept and cheeks gone pink from the cold. She kisses back with equal fervor, like she's been wanting this as much as he has. That's gratifying.

When Zuko's neck starts to crick (he hadn't put much thought before into how much taller he was than her, but now he knows he's going to be thinking about it constantly), he lifts her in one push, using the leverage of the wall. She goes with it, wrapping her legs around his waist and hooking her arms around the back of his head. In that position, it's all too easy for Zuko to press into her body and keep her there, electricity sparking up each time one of them dives back into the kiss.

"Fuck, sugar," Kyoka says. "Holy fuck, you're so fucking hot. Your fucking _arms._ "

"You too," Zuko says, scraping his teeth along the underside of her jaw. "I've been thinking about you for _weeks_."

She fits perfectly in his arms, like the second half of a puzzle piece. She's already rumpled-looking, sounding like her ability to think is fraying more with every kiss they share. Zuko wants take advantage of that—wants to erase every other client Kyoka has ever had from her mind. He's determined to be the best fuck that she has ever had.

"You're gorgeous," he continues, unable to stop the stream coming out of his mouth. "Kyoka, _God_ , your mouth. I want your lips on my cock. I want to taste my come on your tongue. I want to—"

He stops, ribs constricting, as he notices the almost imperceptible flinch in her face. If he wasn't trained to conduct interrogations, he might've missed it, but with all the experience he's had, it might as well be a blinking neon light that he's crossed a line. This is why he shouldn't be on this assignment! He's so far from capable of dealing with hookers, that literally anyone else in the entire precinct could have done a better job than he is. The fact that he's starting to think he'd be okay with getting fired, if he could only get an orgasm out of it, is a clear sign of his ineptitude.

"Shit," Zuko says quickly, loosening his grip on her. "Did I say something wrong? I don't know what I… I mean, you have to tell me your boundaries."

"You didn't," Kyoka replies, equally fast.

"I did," he protests, concerned. "I said something you didn't like."

Kyoka pauses, studying him, and then rocks her hips in a slow lazy motion. She starts to smile again when he can't hold back a grunt at the spark that friction causes. Zuko gets momentarily mesmerized watching as her pupils go darker. "I can assure you, _sugar_ , that I like everything you're doing."

"You promise?" he pants, holding back from another kiss. Fuck, his cock is _throbbing._ He wants his hands on her skin.

She rolls his eyes, but looks kind of pleased, at the same time. "I _promise,_ Prince Charming."

He caves and kisses her, even though he knows he's being made fun of, feeling her hands drop to the buttons of his jeans. He sucks in his stomach, helpfully, giving her more room to free his cock from his boxers. At the same time he takes a hand off the wall and slides it up her stomach under her shirt, feeling nothing but smooth muscle and then the edge of her bra. Apparently, being a hooker calls for a lot of gym time. Zuko thinks Kyoka is in better shape than he is.

In the corner of his eye when he comes up for a breath from a particularly heated stretch of kisses where Kyoka started to stroke the shaft of his cock with deft fingers, he catches sight of his badge, sitting face up on a side table and taunting him. Fuck, fuck, fuck. This isn't what he's supposed to be doing. If he doesn't have the stomach to arrest Kyoka, he should at least tell her the truth; give her the chance to get away.

"Wait," he gasps, arching up on his toes. She presses her thumb into the head of his dick, dragging another string of sounds out of him. "But…" he groans, trying to bat her hand away. "We haven't agreed on…"

He trails off, too distracted to care, because she's pushed his jeans down far enough to start to work his shaft in earnest.

"I don't care," she says, legs a vice-like clamp around his ass. "I just want to blow you. Do whatever; buy me a fucking pizza."

Zuko barely hears the question, about to come all over his clothes. "Okay," he says, yanking at her scarf and throwing it off to the side.

Kyoka punches him lightly in the shoulder so Zuko will put her down, and then drops to her knees, right there in the hallway. She gives him one of the most spectacular blowjobs that he's ever had in his life—sucking lightly on his balls, while her wrist works from head to base—and it's so good that Zuko almost manages to entirely suppress the stab of jealousy he feels thinking about _how_ she got to be so good.

He insists on returning the favor, even though it's probably not how her transactions normally go. Regardless, Kyoka doesn't put up much of a fight. Considering how pink her cheeks get when she's close to coming—how rich the sounds are, spilling from her lips—Zuko doesn't understand why _everyone_ wouldn't want to get her off.

"Do you want me to go?" Kyoka asks uncertainly, still slumped against the wall with her jeans pulled haphazardly down her thighs while Zuko's wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and hoping the room will stop spinning eventually.

"No, no," he says, stuffing his badge under his pile of mail in a quick, hopefully subtle movement. He wants her to never, ever, leave his apartment again. If only he could put her in cuffs for _that._ Or even for other fun, bed-related reasons. "I owe you pizza. You should hang out."

"Uh…," Kyoka says, seeming to do some kind of mental calculation before she gives up entirely, shrugging. "Okay. That sounds good."

So he orders pizza, and Kyoka curls up close to him on the sofa, and they watch sitcoms together until it arrives. She stays through three episodes and five slices before she insists, "I really do have to go."

Zuko tries very hard not to think about where she has to go off to. He kisses her for a long time at the door, making sure to slip the pizza receipt—with his number carefully written out on the back—into her back pocket.

::

It keeps happening, over and over again. Zuko keeps sending Kyoka tentative texts around 10 or 11 at night, trying to work within her schedule, and she keeps coming over, somehow always miraculously in between clients at the time. He really likes her—thinks she's hilarious, smart as fuck, good in bed, and ridiculously hot, when she's well-dressed and wearing her hair naturally. He can't bring himself to ruin her life by arresting her. He's written it off at work, passing the assignment off to someone else, and hoping that they go to any other hooker in the entire city besides Kyoka. He has reserved himself to the fact that he's going to continue paying her for sex, and he's going to hope to fucking hell that no one in the Department ever finds out about it, because that would be the end of his career as a police officer; right now, at only 26.

Except, the thing is, he's not sure that he's actually _paid_ her for sex; not in a way that counts. They've fall into this weird bartering pattern, just shy of illegal. He'd fingered her, mostly paying attention to her clit, because she seemed to really like the slide of his fingers there more than anything else. She came again while they were having sex, and after she only said, "Order some Thai, okay?" She had given him another spectacular blowjob, and then just asked, "Grab me a beer from the fridge."

The first time she slept over, accidentally falling asleep after Zuko ate her out until there were tears leaking out of the corner of her eyes, he'd been nervous that that was going to be the straw that broke the camel's back—that for some reason she was going to turn around and demand compensation for all the other meetings she'd missed that night. Instead, she had only smiled at him across the pillows the next morning, half of her face illuminated by a beam of sun coming in through a window, and asked, "Do you have pancake mix?" She'd even helped him flip them.

He doesn't understand what's going on with them at all, but he doesn't hate it at all.


	3. Chapter 3

Everything comes to a head on a particularly cold day in mid-November. Zuko has a _hellish_ day at work. He loses two straight cases when they go to court, meaning that all his work to prepare for them was for nothing, and then he gets absolutely reamed out by the Captain, for a whole variety of things, including both the court losses, and giving up on the prostitution ring. His favorite lunch place gets his order wrong and then when goes to leave for the day, his tire is flat. By the time he finally gets home, feeling exhausted and fighting a burgeoning headache, all he wants is Kyoka. It's not even that he wants to have sex, either. He wants to see her smile up close, dimples spreading. He wants to lay with his head in her lap and listen to her telling him that tomorrow will be a better day.

Zuko takes a single second to marvel at how well and truly fucked he is. Then he picks up his phone and hits dial.

She answers after only a single ring. "Hello?"

Even the sound of her voice is comforting. It washes over him, bathing him in warmth. He closes his eyes and takes several breaths, letting himself relax.

"Sugar? You okay?" Kyoka asks.

Zuko glances over at the time. It's so early in the evening. It doesn't seem like an appropriate time to pick up a hooker. Still, he swallows. "I need to see you," he says, all in a rush. "I'm sure you're busy but I need to. I can pay-"

"I'll be there soon," she promises. "I just need to wrap up at work."

That makes Zuko's stomach lurch- the reminder of her work. If she's leaving a client early for him though, then he needs to be happy about that. That's the best he's going to get.

Less than thirty minutes later, there's a knock on the door. Kyoka is on the other side, hands tucked into the heavy shell of her jacket.

"Fuck," Zuko breathes out, blinking at the sight. There's snow dusting her hair. She looks ethereal, otherworldly, with her dark skin contrasted against her vivid eyes. "I can't believe you came."

He closes the distance between them, curling both hands around the back of her neck and letting his thumbs brush her cheeks. Then he kisses her until he can barely breathe anymore, feeling all of the tension melt out of his body. This isn't about shielding her from the law anymore. Zuko would do horrible things for her—would break even more laws for her, besides the one he's already made his peace with- and it would scare him, a little, if he didn't see the same magnitude of feelings reflected back in Kyoka's eyes when she steps away, catching her breath.

She reaches up, laying a hand over one of Zuko's resting on her neck. "My name is Katara," she says quietly.

"Katara," Zuko repeats, liking the way it rolls off his tongue.

He kisses _Katara_ again, heartfelt, fully able to appreciate the magnitude of the trust that shows, for her to be so honest with him. He keeps kissing her, too, until he feels the sharp sting of a punch to the arm.

"Ow!" He complains, rubbing at the spot. "What was that for?"

"What's your name, asshole?" she demands.

He grins. "It's Zuko, but I'm fine if you want to keep calling me sugar."

Katara snorts a bark of laughter, even though her eyebrows knit with something strange. "Next time you should just ask them to give you cutesy nicknames, if you like it that much."

"There won't be a next time," Zuko tells her sincerely.

::

Late into the night, he's woken up by two phones going off in unison. Both are playing the standard Apple ringtone, but slightly off from each other, making for a jarring contrast. Zuko's hands slide on warm, naked skin when he leans across the bed to fetch his work iPhone.

"Hello, this is Zuko," he answers.

Next to him, Katara asks, "What can I do for you?", voice sleep rough.

"Deputy," the person on the other line says curtly. "There's a situation I want to make sure you are aware of, in case you get called for back-up."

"What's going on?" Zuko asks, coming more awake with each passing second.

By the time he hangs up, he's sick with nerves, stomach churning. His limbs are thrumming with adrenaline, making him think it's going to be a long time before he gets to sleep.

"Katara," he says urgently. "I don't want to tell you to stop seeing clients, but you have to be careful. The police are beginning a massive raid this week. They're going to be arresting hundreds of people. One of them could be you, if I found you so easily."

Katara is staring back at him, mouth half open in shock. "Let me call you back," she says slowly, to the person on the other end of the line.

"I couldn't stand it if something happens to you," Zuko continues, clenching his case. "I don't want to be put in a position of trying to stop you from going to jail."

"What the fuck?" Katara says, sitting up straighter.

"I'm sorry," he insists. "I haven't been entirely honest with you. I'm a deputy in the police force. That was someone in my Department warning me about the bust."

 _"What?"_ Katara repeats.

"I never should have started this thing to begin with, but I couldn't help myself. I'm so sorry I've been lying to you," he continues, willing her to believe him.

"No, you don't understand," she says, waving at him for him to stop talking. "You just stole my line. I was going to tell _you_ to be careful."

Zuko drops his phone. "I don't understand."

"I was about to warn you that we're going to be arresting any johns we find this week, out soliciting for sex. I was worried about you."

"You're a cop?" Zuko asks, disbelievingly.

" _You're_ a cop?" Katara shoots back.

Zuko is starting to smile, relief substantially more pronounced than the shock. "So you were going to let me pay you for sex and never say anything? Shitty police work, sugar."

"You were going to pay me for sex!" Katara counters. "You suck at your job, too!"

She's still naked in Zuko's bed, sheets pooling around her waist. There's a rash of red at the base of her neck from Zuko's stubble. She's gorgeous, and he doesn't have to feel guilty wanting to keep her around anymore.

"So you don't have other clients?" he checks, heart starting to race. "Just me?"

"No!" she says. "And you don't go picking up hookers on the regular?"

"Fuck no!" he says. "I hated that awful assignment when I got it."

"God, me too," Katara says. She starts laughing, a choked off, wheezing sound that's pretty contagious.

"What's up?" Zuko asks, even as he starts giggling too.

"We're going to have to come up with a very different story for how we started dating," she tells him. "My family can _never_ hear this one."


End file.
